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Where Is the Asian Body? the Problem of Erasure in Western Visual Culture

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Where Is the Asian Body? the Problem of Erasure in Western Visual Culture WHERE IS THE ASIAN BODY? THE PROBLEM OF ERASURE IN WESTERN VISUAL CULTURE By Vicky Shi In Visual Studies Submitted to the Department of Visual Studies University of Pennsylvania Thesis Advisors: Murali Balaji and Gregory Vershbow 2021 Shi 2 Abstract Asians have suffered from erasure and poor representation in western media, which at its core a visual problem as well as a sociopolitical one. Since humans are inherently visual creatures and receive a lot of information from the media and entertainment they consume, the lack of visibility and humanization given to Asians on-screen very well affect how people perceive Asians off-screen. This poor representation is not a new phenomenon; racist portrayals of Asians and the use of Asian clothing and objects for clout is in fact a continuation of deeply ingrained traditions in the West. My paper reveals the different issues of Asian stereotypes and erasure and the history that allows these incidents to keep happening. Though the term “Asian” includes many ethnicities, this paper will mainly focus on East Asian appropriation and representation in Western media. Shi 3 INTRODUCTION On the 16th of March this year, a white man drove from Woodstock to Atlanta in Georgia, and took a gun to three different day spas, killing six Asian women. After the act, he admitted to the police that he was a sex addict and wanted to “eliminate the temptation.” He denied that this shooting was racially motivated, even though he specifically targeted Asian day spas. This event comes following a rise in violence towards Asians in the West, especially after it was announced that the epicenter of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic was Wuhan, China. To any person of color in the West, this event was tragic, but unsurprising. The West, and particularly the United States of America, has had a long tradition of racially motivated violence. Attacks against Asian-Americans have largely been buried and forgotten, but since the Atlanta shooting, events like the Chinese Massacre of 1871, the Bellingham riots of 1907, and the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 have again begun circulating in the media. Many claim that they do not know how this could have happened, or how they never saw this coming, but the truth is, many of the Asians in America were waiting for an event like this to unfold since the first time former President Donald Trump uttered “Chinese virus”1 and “kung flu.”2 Attacks like this one are a strong indication of the failed assimilation of Asians and other non-European minorities in the West. To be clear, this is not the fault of the minorities. Despite claims of being a “melting pot” of cultures, the history of colonization perpetrated by Western Europe, and later the United States, signal that western societies purposely create this racial divide to maintain imperialistic Eurocentric power. This message is 1 Trump, Donald (@realDonaldTrump): “The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!” 2 Steakin and Pereira: “Trump brought up the virus's origins in China, much to the amusement of the crowd. ‘COVID-19. That name gets further and further away from China as opposed to calling it the Chinese virus,’ he said to a loud applause. He also later referred to it as the ‘kung flu.’” Shi 4 then supplemented repeatedly by the structures of these societies, and by the media culture they embrace, and circulate. This paper aims to exam the different frames of anti-Asian media in the West, including the deliberate placement and erasure of Asian bodies, and how this media then reflects and reinforces the social climate in Western reality. I. RACIAL INEQUALITY AND THE UNCANNY VALLEY IN THE WEST Despite claims of racial equality, to this day, Western societies clearly favors those racialized as “white.” Historically, they have been the majority and traditionally played the role of imperialistic power. A representation of this power in the United States is citizenship, which was only freely given to white people until the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, which allowed African Americans citizenship as well. In 1906, Congress revised the Naturalization Act of 1870 to add an English fluency clause as an additional requirement for U.S. citizenship, meaning that “free white persons” and “persons of African nativity or persons of African descent” who could speak English could gain citizenship.3 Takao Ozawa, of Japanese descent, and Bhagat Singh Thind, of Indian descent, both filed for citizenship under this act, arguing that they constitute as “free white persons.” Ozawa had resided in the United States for 20 years and Thind had served in the U.S. military during World War I. However, in both cases, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that neither East Asians nor South Asians could identify as “white” and therefore could not become citizens of the United States.4 In Ozawa’s case, it was determined that there was too much difference between Asians and whites in terms of racial origin, while in Thind’s case, the courts expanded the definition of “white” to include linguistic 3 Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923) 4 Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923) Shi 5 and cultural differences.5 The 1922 and 1923 verdicts categorically refused whiteness nor assimilation to those deemed “Asian,” regardless of which part of Asia they hailed. Despite subsequent laws that eventually allowed US-born Asians and immigrants citizenship, this precedent created a sense of hostility towards Asians in Western societies. Despite “Asians [having] resided in America throughout three-fourths of the nation’s history, many fourth- generation or fifth-generation Asian-Americans still feel like foreigners in this country.”6 The social structure and racial hierarchy of the West not only reinforces this idea but encourages it. In 1970, Japanese scientist Masahiro Mori published an article on what he coined the “uncanny valley,” or his theory of human reactions to objects that are humanistic. On the graph, the y-axis represents human affinity while the y-axis represents the degree of realistic portrayal. Mori explains that as things go further along the x-axis, people start feeling a negative affinity to those objects. For example, a toy robot will vaguely represent a human, but is not frightening because they are not made to look realistic. The toy robot retains features that make it undeniably inhuman. However, something like a prosthetic hand or a corpse may bring about a feeling of unease to a healthy human being, since they resemble something human but are not, or no longer, human. This reaction is represented by the deep plunge at the bottom of the graph, where the curve goes south in measurements of human affinity.7 Mori’s uncanny valley is often used in android design in an autonomous future to describe the unease that occurs when looking at objects that mimic humanity. The response is perhaps even instinctual as androids are a clear example of what could replace humans altogether. It is only natural for people to ostracize that which can destroy them; therefore, the crux of the uncanny valley lies in the innate fear of human 5 Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923) 6 Tung, 90. 7 Mori, 98-100. Shi 6 mortality.8 In this vein of thought, the uncanny valley can also be applied through a racial context in Western societies, especially in Europe and the United States. Revealed on a microscopic level, “research on immigrant students of color reveals that students undergo a process of racialization as they are incorporated into the existing racial hierarchy of the United States—one that places White people at the top and defines them as the only true Americans.”9 Furthermore, “participants in both of our studies internalized these notions of Americanness, evidenced strongly in their reserving the term ‘American’ to refer to White people, while using ethnically or racially specific language to identify themselves or other people of color.”10 When enlarged to a national scale and enforced by systematic ostracization, compared to the white majority or “true Americans,” the racial Other seems to invade the United States or exists in it unnaturally in the eyes of both parties. Since these “Others” do not resemble the white majority, their existence becomes a parody of white livelihood and their humanity comes into question. This racial division in the U.S. is further perpetrated by the stereotypes and biases the white majority forces on these Others. By creating these exaggerations, the white majority can control how the racial Other is portrayed. These caricatures are the start of the systematic dehumanization, with different archetypes assigned to different racial group. With East Asians, alienation peaked with the spread of the Yellow Peril ideology. Throughout the late 19th and the early 20th century, mass immigration brought an increase of Asian population in the United States as a direct result of Western military and imperialistic influences on Asia. However, this influx brought fear that these so-called “foreigners” would disrupt or potentially overtake the white majority. As a response, British author Sax Rohmer created Fu Manchu, a crafty Chinese 8 Mori, 98-100. 9 Lee and Vaught, 457. 10 Lee and Vaught, 464. Shi 7 mastermind plotting to overthrow the white, Eurocentric world, at the height of the Yellow Peril.
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